New York City FC are set to take on Club de Fútbol Tigres de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León on Tuesday night at Exploria Stadium in round two of the 2020 Concacaf Champions League
Here’s the Keys to the Match, presented by Tri-State Ford…
Back to Exploria
NYCFC enter the Concacaf Champions League matchup against Tigres UANL playing at a familiar stadium where they lost an epic battle of penalty kicks during Round One of the Audi 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs against Orlando City SC.
Since their last match, the Boys in Blue have had time to recover from the long weeks of the regular season and continue training in order to try to advance through to the semifinals of North America's premier club competition.
Ahead of Tuesday’s match, Head Coach Ronny Deila, spoke to the press about what it means to him as the coach leading New York City FC into their first Concacaf Champions League.
Deila said: "I'm proud all the time to be representing and to be the coach of NYCFC. To be the coach taking them through the first Concacaf Championship is of course very honorable. I'm very grateful for that and we are looking forward to the game. It's been a very strange season, we are 1-0 down, but we showed in the game last time that we can do something against Tigres. Tigres is a really good team and that says something about us as well. Tomorrow we are going to go out and fight to show that we are capable of going to the semifinal."
Starting XI Dilemmas
Ronny Deila will remain without Héber, James Sands, and Gedion Zelalem, whom they played without in their last battle down South, as well as Sean Johnson who ruled himself out of contention on Twitter yesterday.
It won't be easy to advance, but there's still plenty of quality for Deila to choose from as the team looks to overcome the one-goal deficit and move on to face Olimpia or Montreal Impact in the last four.
Big Opportunity
Luis Barraza is one player who has been confirmed in the lineup, stepping in for Sean Johnson. For Deila, it's an important opportunity for Luis, who joined the Club in the 2019 MLS SuperDraft.
He said: "Sean has been a close contact, so he's not available for the game tomorrow. But Luis is ready, so he's going to play.
"Luis has been fighting for now two years to be close to the team and I'm very happy now that he gets a chance. He's talented, young, he's been working really hard and now the time has come and we're looking forward to the game to see how Luis is going to do. I'm very confident he will have a good game."
H2H
This is the second all-time meeting between City and Tigres with their first match in March 2020. The teams met pre-coronavirus where NYC fell 0-1 against the visitors at Red Bull Arena. Eduardo Vargas scored the only goal of the match for his side in the second minute of stoppage time.
Tigres UANL currently sit in the sixth-place position of the 2020-21 Liga MX. In their last two legs of the league, they won and lost a match against Cruz Azul who hold the fourth-place position.
A win for NYCFC will allow them to come back from their tough loss in late November and advance to the single leg semifinals. Tonight's victors will advance to meet CD Olimpia or the Montreal Impact on Saturday, December 19th at 8PM ET.
How to Watch & Listen
To watch as NYCFC battle for a win versus Tigres UANL tune into FS1 and Fox Sports Go for game coverage in English. For Spanish coverage head over to TUDN where they will countdown to kick off at 10:30PM ET.
